The Independent C/D

Can someone elaborate about the alleged stat-fiddling in his recent "Muslims = homophobes OMG I WENT THERE" piece?

CORRECTION: This article originally said Tower Hamlets had the single highest rise in homophobic violence in the UK, when in fact it merely had one of the highest rises over the past decade. Credit to Peter Lilley for emailing to point this out.

It is also true there has been a slight fall in the homophobic violence there over the past two years, but this is almost certainly due to the fact that lots of gay people (like me) have moved out of the area. Horrific gay-bashings, posters calling for gay people to be killed, and people handing out leaflets demanding the death of gays will have that effect. To claim the driving out of gay people as evidence for a fall in homophobia is pretty perverse.

"Almost certainly"

here's some more shenanigans. this is from one of hari's orwell prize-winning pieces:

Do you believe in the rights of women, or do you believe in multiculturalism? A series of verdicts in the German courts in the past month, have shown with hot, hard logic that you can't back both. You have to choose.

The crux case centres on a woman called Nishal, a 26-year-old Moroccan immigrant to Germany with two kids and a psychotic husband. Since their wedding night, this husband beat the hell out of her. She crawled to the police covered in wounds, and they ordered the husband to stay away from her. He refused. He terrorised her with death threats.

[...]

A Lebanese-German who strangled his daughter Ibthahale and then beat her unconscious with a bludgeon because she didn't want to marry the man he had picked out for her was sentenced to mere probation. His "cultural background" was cited by the judge as a mitigating factor.

A Turkish-German who stabbed his wife Zeynep to death in Frankfurt was given the lowest possible sentence, because, the judge said, the murdered woman had violated his "male honour, derived from his Anatolian moral concepts". The bitch. A Lebanese-German who raped his wife Fatima while whipping her with a belt was sentenced to probation, with the judge citing his ... you get the idea.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-how-multiculturalism-is-betraying-women-446806.html

"a series of verdicts ... in the past month" - his piece appeared on 30 april 2007, but the "nishal" case took place in january, and was only publicised by her lawyer at the end of march, when the judge was sacked. ok, a bit sloppy. but according to der speigel, the "ibthahale" case was in 2005. the "zeynep" case was 2003, and was reversed on appeal in 2004. der speigel goes on to say "higher courts usually reverse these rulings", but hari doesn't mention that. the "fatima" case was 2002.

so he's conflated cases from half a decade into "the past month" and ignored the fact that in many of his examples german courts addressed his complaints, removing a judge, overturning decisions on appeal etc. it creates a completely misleading picture of german society.

it's not clear where hari got the names from, either. they're not in his acknowledged source, and the reporting on the supposed "nishal" case says explicitly that the woman's name wasn't released. it seems likely that he made them up for pathos:

Yes, it would be easy to keep our heads down, go with this multicultural drift, and congratulate ourselves on our tolerance of the fanatically intolerant. But I can give you a few good reasons not to. Their names are Nishal and Ibthahale and Zeynep and Fatima, and, yes, they were women.

Obviously the NOTW business has made this look like minor pissing about but under the latest story from Guy Walters in the New Statesman there's a comment which points out that he lifted lines from here and presented them as fresh quotes in this piece. And Hari's piece is, of all things, an attack on plagiarism.

Glad to see Private Eye noted the hypocrisy of Toby Young in this matter (no, I did not tip them off).

It was going around Twitter. He was an idiot for wading in there.

What I wish more left-wing journalists had done was say what you should in all plagiarism cases, ie, let's see what else emerges. This behaviour is invariably habitual so it was daft to try and explain away the first two examples that came to light as if that were the end of it. This Guy Walters seems to have a bit of a vendetta running but I think he's right to publish examples that people send in.

Nick Cohen talks about this today.

"David R"s edits on Wikipedia.

.. and David R's IP turns out to be from ... the Indy.

Re: Cohen. Hari's article on What's Left was entirely reasonable and Cohen's hysterical reaction was entirely in keeping with his general inability to cope with any criticism of his book, or anyone who dared to stick a pin in his self-image as heroic dissident. The allegation that Hari was behind those Wikipedia sabotages can't be entirely dismissed, but Cohen is given to distortion a lot of the time himself, so any allegations he makes must also be viewed with suspicion.

lol journalism

I've been involved in editing the Johann Hari wikipedia page, and have been struggling with DaveR as a fellow editor for a long time now. Although I thought he was Hari for a long time, I think he actually is a close friend of Hari's, called David Rose, who essentially writes and maintains puff pieces about Hari on the web, to maintain his web profile. Take a look (if you can bring yourself to) at the voluminous wikipedia Hari discussion pages.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Talk:Johann_Har

only thing worse than being johann hari, editiing his own wikipedia pages, would be being a fan of johann hari's, editing his wikipedia pages for free.

Indy suspends Hari

it's been a great week for fans of Karma

Hari Hari Hari Hari Karma

Re: Cohen. Hari's article on What's Left was entirely reasonable and Cohen's hysterical reaction was entirely in keeping with his general inability to cope with any criticism of his book, or anyone who dared to stick a pin in his self-image as heroic dissident. The allegation that Hari was behind those Wikipedia sabotages can't be entirely dismissed, but Cohen is given to distortion a lot of the time himself, so any allegations he makes must also be viewed with suspicion.

― Freedom, Friday, July 8, 2011 8:51 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark

usually im not a fan of researching ur life ish but this is quite impressive:

http://jackofkent.blogspot.com/2011/07/who-is-david-rose.html

as people used to say about saddam, though, they'll only replace him with someone worse

i was at a party full of left-wing activist types last weekend (they were mostly very fucking dull), a good portion of which was spent, in tandem with anna f, haranguing some awful long-haired student type who was being a save-a-hari "because he's left-wing"

Not even true he's "left wing" IMO.

probably "left wing" in scare quotes will do, he trades on being ~On Our Side~ so much

i get pretty annoyed with people who can reduce their world view to nothing more than "left wing" or "right wing" though

Hooray, more work for Laurie Penny

I like that Nick Cohen article linked to above... it is very measured but makes wise points. I was a bit surprised to like it, as I had the idea that Nick Cohen is a bit rubbish. Oh no, maybe I am turning right wing.

I have to say, having worked in offices with both people -- not that this means really anything at all -- that Johann is a lovely bloke, and Nick Cohen is a horrible bullying arsehole. Just a proviso. The person is not always the work.

you are Johann Hari, aren't you?

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/guy-walters/2011/07/johann-hari-independent-prize

i don't read the NS too assiduously, but i get their emails. this guy is going hard on hari, which is fair play, but, like, has the NS admitted that it actually created him? wonder if anyone's checked his work for them.

Leftygreg
26 July 2011 at 09:06

It's Bill Clinton all over again. The people accusing him begin to appear so twisted and odious that no one can bring themselves to really get angry at the guilty party.

worry about the intellectual level of this country, once in a while

iirc the NS is for the clevers?

when "clever" and "pig stupid" go to extremes they meet again in the middle or whatever

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/sep/13/independent-editor-johann-hari-plagiarism?CMP=twt_fd

stoked for the madness

great headline on the print edition: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/george-osborne-feels-the-pain-of-dominatrixs-claims-2353648.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-a-personal-apology-2354679.html

what an amazing business journalism is. what do you have to do to get sacked? i don't really give a shit: the independent is a terrible newspaper and johann hari is about what its readers deserve, but at the level of curiosity it's not clear what he's done to inspire this leniency.

;dr

Well, I often enjoyed his articles in the past, but this is grievous, grievous stuff, the admission about the Wikipedia articles shocking in particular. As for the Independent, well, I haven't read it in a long while. They employ Patrick Cockburn, so kudos for that, but otherwise *shrug*.

@alex_macpherson Alex Macpherson
Lohan Hari RT @gervasedewilde hari's journalism course commitment is reminiscent of the redemptive spell in 'rehab' for the errant celebrity
2 hours ago via UberSocial for BlackBerry

it really is the most pointless thing though. wtf is this course going to teach him?

how to love

isn't it kind of like people taking remedial driving classes instead of getting points on their licence?

Such a weaselly apology. Should have been fired.

my fav bit of the apology:

(I rose very fast in journalism straight from university.)

:D

http://jamiemalanowski.com/blogwp/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/dscn0497.jpg

i like how the last sentence of his apology implies that it's his readers that need retraining, not him.

I think that was a grammatical error...the emotion got to him.

just trawled through all the blog posts and wikipedia articles about this guy. have to say, I'm surprised no-one is talking about the paedo incest story he wrote in 2006. a pretty repellent piece of work and enough on its own to get him fired imo.

link?

it's mentioned at the end of this article:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/cristinaodone/100096260/i-fell-out-with-johann-hari-–-then-david-rose-started-tampering-viciously-with-my-wikipedia-entry/

link too long, sorry

There used to be an entire section on Littlejohn's Wikipedia page about his feud with Hari. I assume Johann wrote the entire thing?

I didn't know about the Wikipedia editing before, it kind of beggars belief that Hari could be idiotic enough to think that was alright. Think he's just so egotistical he didn't care.

or just thought he could get away with it

Good grief though Cristina Odone is a complete fucking bigot. I've only just reached the last paragraph.

Stay class Silvio, and Independent subs!

http://i.imgur.com/sn8NH.jpg

"Stay classy"!